Stop Paying the Price for Factory Farming

target: Caroline Spelman, Secretary for State for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

On average, each UK citizen shells out nearly £8 per month in taxes towards EU farming subsidies. In total, European citizens pay over £45 billion (€55 billion) a year into the Common Agricultural Policy. Disgracefully, the CAP does little to protect our farm animals.

Factory farming is a disgusting way to produce food  and in Europe it's rife. At least 8 out of 10 farm animals spend their days confined in sheds, pens and cages. Billions die in under-regulated slaughterhouses or prematurely from injury or exhaustion.

For the first time in 8 years, EU farming subsidies are up for review. Every Member State has the chance to voice their opinion and call for changes in the way subsidies are spent. This is our big chance to ensure our taxes pay for the higher welfare farming we want.

Urge the Secretary of State for Defra to be the voice of the British people and lobby for animal welfare to be placed at the heart of European agricultural policy.

Every single year, billions of pounds of taxpayers' money are spent by the EU on farm subsidies. I believe that a percentage should be used to help famers invest in changes that will improve the lives of their animals.

I am very concerned that the CAP proposals recently released by the Commission do little to help EU agriculture move to more sustainable, humane forms of farming. It's a scandal that virtually none of the €55 billion of public money that is paid out each year under the CAP will go toward ending the cruelty of factory farming.

Currently at least 80 percent of farm animals in the EU are factory farmed. This is concerning not only because it has severe disadvantages for animal welfare, but because factory farming damages the environment through pollution and overuse of water, land degradation, and also by eroding biodiversity.

Factory farms also impair human health as the excess levels of meat consumption made possible by industrial production are associated with obesity, an increased risk of heart disease and certain cancers.

Please lobby for animal welfare to be placed at the heart of the EU Agricultural Policy, and help ensure taxpayers' money is spent on subsidies that protect EU farm animals and encourage higher welfare farming.